


We Were Made to Last

by missmungoe



Series: Stay the Course [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Time Skip, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-08 17:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12258777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmungoe/pseuds/missmungoe
Summary: There’s a future that never was. In fact, there are several — she’s a pirate, a barmaid; she’s both. She braves the sea, and wears the scars to prove it. There’s an island, and a tavern with a green copper roof; a crew that never leaves, and a family that’s more than blood. There's a boy with his father’s hair, and a girl Pirate King. And they’re happy. There are a lot of futures that could have been but never were, but it’s the one constant in all of them.There’s a future that is. They’ll be happy in this one, too. It’s their one constant.It just takes them a little longer to get there, this time.





	We Were Made to Last

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for the flower prompt "raspberry" (remorse) and "ulmus" (royalty, strength, age). I'm a sucker for happy endings, and especially with these two, but sometimes I like to throw a few hurdles into their paths first.
> 
> See, I say "a few", but that might be an understatement in this case.

He doesn’t go back, after Marineford.

He means to, but things come up. The sea has few sympathies to offer old promises and personal feelings, and the weeks slip through his fingers, becoming months, and before he’s even had the chance to take in just how much time has passed, it’s been two years since the war.

He thinks about calling her, but he doesn’t want the first thing he says to her in twelve years to be through a Den Den Mushi. And he’ll go back, Shanks thinks. Not when it’s safe, because the sea will never be that, but there’ll be a day where he can sit back and breathe again. He’ll go back then, when he can actually go back to _stay_.

“You might regret it,” Ben says, when Shanks tells him. And it’s not reproachfully said, just a calm statement of fact. Because he might disagree with the decision, but not Shanks’ reasons for making it. They can’t leave now, with Blackbeard still to deal with. And Ben has always been starkly pragmatic; a good foil to a captain prone to following his gut more often than not.

It’s not his gut he wants to follow this time, but the heart is even less concerned with what’s the best course of action, selfish thing that it is.

He wants to be selfish, Shanks thinks. Going back would mean being that—would mean putting his own feelings before her (not necessarily before her own feelings, because love makes a damn mess of things, and there’s little room left for self-preservation after a decade’s worth of _longing_ ). Even if he could only stay a little while, she’d ask him to come back, if the choice was up to her. Which is why he needs to be the one to make it.

Because there’s another regret that sits, seeming to be waiting just beyond reach. The thought of what going back might mean for her. He has enough enemies lining up. And he can take losing a limb, or a title. But losing _her—_

“Maybe,” Shanks says, and downs the contents of the tumbler in his hand. Indecision makes for a truly shitty drinking companion, and there are few answers to be found at the bottom of his glass, but even if Ben is right, there’s one thing he knows for certain.

“But I’d rather my being a little late is the only regret I have when this is over.”

 

—

 

He doesn’t come back, and for a while, she keeps waiting. She holds out hope that it’s just a delay—wonders idly why she’s surprised that there is one. Part of her had expected it, the same part that expects him to show up in her doorway any day, with that predictably sheepish grin, and _sorry I’m late._

She’ll smile, Makino thinks. In her imagination she’s always smiling, and she’ll pull out that bottle she’s been saving for ten years and ask, like it hasn’t been that many since she saw him last— _can I get you a drink, Captain?_

The first few weeks are easy to bear. The months that follow are harder, but whenever her hope begins to falter she just grips it tighter, and it’s been two whole years before she starts to slowly accept the fact that he might not be coming back at all.

It’s been another before she realises that even if he meant to, he won’t be.

She reads about it in the paper. He’s not the first Emperor to fall to Blackbeard, but it takes reading it several times over for the realisation to finally sink in. As though there’s a part of her that can’t accept it, the fact that he would _lose—_ that he wouldn’t live through this, the strongest man she knows, after the one who’d helped raise her.

(but even Garp follows, shortly after. She doesn’t read about that in the paper; instead she gets a phone call, from the former Fleet Admiral. A almost-father’s last request to an old friend, and already grieving, she’s so numb she can barely speak)

There are no funerals, only Dadan and a bottle between them. Makino doesn’t know what to do with the hollowness, creeping around her bones, her veins, until it’s filled her stomach and her chest and her heart, and everything she does feels like _too much_ and _not enough—_ there’s too much air to breathe, but it hurts when she tries. She has too much time on her hands, but she can’t stop thinking about all the years they could have had, if she’d just taken him up on his offer thirteen years ago, to go with him.

She wonders where she would have been, if she had—if she would have been dead along with him.

(part of her wonders if it would have been kinder than what she is now, alive but not living, breathing but only out of necessity, as though her body remembers that she needs to but not _why_ )

Shanks dies, and it leaves her changed. And he hasn’t been part of her life in twelve years, but she feels it, the sense that nothing will be the same. That she won’t be, after this.

Shanks _dies_ , and the world moves on. She doesn’t understand how it could—that it could even pretend to be the same without him in it. Because even seas away, she feels it. Like a missing limb, prodding with phantom pains, even as her heart keeps beating in her chest.

The irony isn’t kind; it’s cruel, and wicked, and she cries until it hurts more than breathing does, until she’s so exhausted she falls asleep, but it’s the only way she knows how, these days.

It’s weeks before it feels like she can breathe without thinking. It’s months before she can fall asleep without the assistance of a strong drink. It’s a whole wound of a year before stops looking out the window with every other breath, a never-ending widow’s walk for a man who was never her husband, hoping there’ll be a ship on the horizon in spite of everything—familiar sails, and that sheepish grin in her doorway, and _I’m sorry I’m late._

It takes her a long time to move on.

But she does, in the end.

 

—

 

“Married?”

The word comes to him slowly, sluggishly dragging through his head, and it takes him a moment to understand, as though his mind knows what it means, knows the definition, but it can’t piece together the significance of its speaking.

Ben only looks at him, expression carefully blank, but the deep furrow between his brows betrays him. He’s not smoking, Shanks sees. Somehow, that little detail seems more significant than anything else.

“You're sure?” Shanks asks after a moment. And it feels like he’s just buying himself time, asking for further assurance. Because he knows the answer to his own question like he knows the man he asked it of; Ben wouldn’t be so careless with information if he didn’t have all the facts.

And, “Just recently,” Ben confirms. And he doesn’t say anything else, but the implication finds him, anyway—the suggestion that she might have waited. And Shanks knows her—knows that she probably did.

He doesn’t know which realisation is the worst, when it finally finds him—that he was still holding out hope that she was waiting, or the fact that she had waited, and longer than anyone else would, but that he was still too late.

Or maybe it’s the third—the slow-settling grief, realising that his biggest regret would turn out to be of his own make after all.

“What do you want to do?” Ben asks, and like all the others, it takes a little while for the words to sink in. His head feels heavy, his ears thick, but he’s not running a fever. His injuries have healed enough that he doesn’t feel like a sneeze will be what tips him over, but thinking feels like wading through a marsh, every step requiring all his strength, and he doesn’t have any left to answer Ben’s question.

Recovering had taken time. He hadn’t been in a state fit to go anywhere, and he’d already taken so long to go back, he hadn’t thought that a few more months would change anything.

 _Recently_ , Ben had said. She’d married just recently, and there’s something like a laugh pushing up his chest, forming like a lump in his throat, a tumour pressing against his windpipe.

“Shanks?”

Breathing takes effort. Beneath him, the sway of his ship tells him the sea is quiet, but then he’s never known the East Blue to be anything else.

They’re docked a few islands over. It’ll take a day to reach Dawn, maybe less, and there’s a part of him that wants to tell Ben to hell with what’s awaiting him, and to keep to their course.

The fact that there is a part of him so ready to be selfish is what makes his decision for him.

“Set a new course,” Shanks says instead.

Disagreement draws Ben’s features tight, but what he asks is, “Where?”

“Anywhere else.”

“You sure you don’t want to talk to her? Tell her you’re still alive, at least?”

He does laugh at that, but it’s never sounded less like one. “I think this is for the best.”

Ben just looks at him. “You might regret it.”

The conversation rings a bit too familiar for comfort, and he should probably take some wisdom from that fact, but the thought of going back now, and of seeing her again after so long—of having to treat her like an acquaintance, an old friend, as though she was never anything else, as though she wasn’t _everything_ , and not being able to touch her, or taste her, or even look at her like he had once…

Maybe it’s because he knows she can’t choose him now, whatever her feelings, that he can’t make himself go back.

Or maybe it’s because there’s a small part of him that hopes she might still choose him after all, if he does.

He thinks it might be the last one, but he doesn’t tell Ben that. Of course, he doesn’t doubt that Ben has gathered as much.

“Then I’ll add it to the list,” Shanks says, and leaves it at that. Except there’s no leaving this, he knows, like there was no leaving her. Not truly.

 

—

 

He gets drunk. Blind, out-of-your-mind, gut-wrenching _drunk_. And it doesn’t help, because grief is an even worse drinking companion than indecision is, but he drinks until he drowns it, the thought of her, and the part of his soul that’s hers, that misses her, that’s been missing her for _twelve goddamn years_ , and then he drinks some more, until he’s the one drowning; until he stops feeling like he wants to say _to fucking hell with it all_ and go back anyway. And when he’s done that, he drinks until he stops feeling.

Shanks wonders how much it would take for him to just _stop_.

 

—

 

She’s married, for a little while.

Her wedding was nice. Simple. Her husband is, too— _nice_. Kind and unassuming. A little simple, too, in his pleasures and ambitions. A local farmer recently settled, with a small house and a windmill sitting pretty in a quiet corner of the village. He has a soft smile, and dimples in his cheeks.

He asks her several times. She says _no_ , the first three.

Then— _maybe_. The years have made her lonely, and loss has made her impatient where she wasn’t before. But there’s no waiting for a dead man, and Makino doesn’t know what she’s holding out hope for, exactly.

Then— _yes_ , she says finally, and for a little while, things aren’t so bad. It’s nice to have someone—someone who looks at her with affection, and he treats her well, and kindly. He doesn’t ask for more than she can give, and Makino thinks, maybe naively, that she can be happy like this. That she _will_ be happy one day.

When it’s over, she tucks her wedding dress away, and doesn’t take it back out. She hears she’s supposed to, that it’s part of coming out of the newlywed bliss, to reminisce about the day it all started; to lament not being able to wear it again, and feel so much joy.

Makino doesn’t want to reminisce, or to look at the wedding dress, much less wear it—the one that’s all _wrong_ , pretty but not her, nothing about it is _her._ She hasn’t been herself, hasn’t felt like herself, in months.

(she’d always been herself with _him_ , and he would have liked her in anything, would have liked her completely naked on his ship under the open sky and would have suggested as much when he asked her to marry him, with that smile she both wishes she would forget and can’t bear to part with)

She’s married for a little while, but her husband passes, six months after their wedding. An illness, they tell her, long in coming. There was nothing they could have done.

Makino tries to feel the grief she should feel—looks for it, the one that she’s so familiar with. The one that had made it hurt to breathe, and even more to live. The one that had sent her off to bed with a drink burning in her stomach, just to bear the silence.

But nothing hurts, and the silence of her lonely bed is a comfort now. It had never felt right, the few months that she’d shared it. It had always felt a little off, falling asleep beside a man who slept so quietly, who didn’t snore, or reach for her in his sleep, or take up the whole mattress. And for so many weeks after their wedding she’d come wake, reaching for another body, skin darker and scars under her fingertips, but they’d bleed away upon that first touch, and guilt would greet her mornings with her husband’s kisses, the ones that had always been sweet but never quite _right—_ no drowsy laughter in them, pressed with a smile against her pulse, her cheeks, her breasts.

She thinks it should hurt, which is probably the worst part. And she feels bad, because they tell her _I’m so sorry, Makino-san. Young folks like you should have had a whole life together._

And _yes_ , she says, with all the conviction she can muster, but it’s not her husband she has in mind; has never been that, however kind he was, and however safe the future he promised.

She feels bad, not because her husband is dead, but because she can’t grieve him like she should, like she’d grieved the man she’d known for a single year and who she hadn’t seen in twelve. The man who hadn’t been her husband, but who she’d lost like he had been, and more besides.

It takes her a little while to move on, but she does. She moves back to her old apartments above the bar, which is better than living alone in a house that had never felt like home. And it’s nice, having her own space again. Her bed. Her books.

There’s also more of _him_ there—small, private memories that she’d never allowed anyone else to infringe upon, like the first time he’d stayed the night, that loud, adoring laughter chasing her off to sleep, deepened with an intimate feeling she hadn’t known to recognise for what it was at the time. And how it had felt, waking to find him sprawled across the mattress of her bed, all strong limbs and red hair and some part of her in his keeping, and she’d thought, stupidly, _naively_ , that she would like to wake up like that for the rest of her life.

She doesn’t push the memories away now, but allows herself to hoard them, to keep them, and stops pretending that it’s not giving her some measure of comfort. And she stops trying to feel guilty for not properly grieving a man she’d never properly _loved._

It’s not easy, of course. She’s never been good at being selfish, and it feels _selfish_ , choosing this; choosing herself, when she couldn’t choose the man she really wanted. The one she had loved, and grieved.

Her life settles back into familiar routines, slowly but surely. It will never be the same, Makino thinks, but she can live like this. She runs her bar, and serves her patrons. She has her memories, her small, private things, and people to keep her grounded.

And when her long days are done she goes to bed, and dreams herself off somewhere else—to a different life on a different sea and a woman years younger, standing at the bow of a pirate ship, salt in her dark hair and the sea heaving like the heart in her chest, but the sturdy grip of a strong arm around her waist keeping her steady.

 

—

 

Luffy calls. It’s been years since Makino saw him last, that day he’d first set out to sea, and she hears his laughter before anything else, tumbling over the line, warm and bright into the quiet of her bar, which seems to _respond_ , like it’s been starved of the sound. Like she has been, Makino thinks.

He asks her how she’s been, and she keeps her answers vague. She doesn’t tell him about her marriage, the brief affair that it was. There’s not even a mark around her finger from her wedding ring; she hadn’t worn it long enough for it to leave one, and she thinks she should probably be upset about that.

(she remembers how upset she’d been, that morning she’d woken, a few weeks after Shanks had left for the Grand Line, and found that the sheets didn’t smell like him anymore. She’d cried, then)

Luffy is still talking, but allows her to get in a question or two. But she doesn’t ask about Shanks, or if Luffy had been there when it happened. She doesn’t think she can bear to explain _why_ she’s asking, and after so long.

They talk about other things instead. Pirate King now, he’s got enough stories to share, and she listens as he stumbles over himself trying to tell them all at once, his attention fleeting but his eagerness so dear and familiar, for a few moments she forgets all the years that have passed, and it’s the little boy perched on one of her barstools, trying his best to explain the finer points of piracy and manhood, and the importance for a pirate to have a policy and to stick to it.

 _A man has to keep his word,_ he’d told her, with all the grave seriousness only a six-year-old could manage with a straight face.

She remembered having to fight to hide her smile. _And if he doesn’t?_

 _Well then he’s stupid!_ He’d righted his shoulders. _I’m gonna be stronger than Shanks. I’ll be the greatest pirate ever! That’s my promise._

She’d laughed at that—not at the promise, but at that serious little face and the unshakable conviction. And she’d thought then that she would miss him, when he one day set out to sea.

 _I’ll take your word for it, Luffy_.

She doesn’t have children. She’d always hoped she would, back when she’d been younger and she’d imagined the future she wanted. A family of her own; a babe at the breast, and little hands tugging at her skirt, tailing her across the length of her bar and back. Children raised on sea shanties and tavern tales.

A widow now, Makino thinks she’s supposed to mourn that loss as well, but the truth is there’s a part of her that’s relieved they didn’t have the chance to get to that point (the part that had for so many years hoped her children would be _his_ , red hair and wide, cheeky smiles, and enough noise and trouble between them to keep her life filled with both), but listening to Luffy talking, she doesn’t think about her regrets.

 _“I’ll come visit,”_ he tells her. He sounds older, Makino thinks. Cheerful as always, but his voice a little deeper. His laughter too, but the sound of it promises to fill a room with ease.

It’s familiar, she thinks, still-broken heart breaking a little further, but she doesn’t bring up the comparison. She doesn’t doubt that the loss weighs on him too, for all his outward cheer.

“You’d make me very happy if you did,” she says instead, and for the first time in a long time, feels certain of that fact.

 

—

 

Life moves on, and after a while, he stops counting the years.

He keeps mostly off the grid, a smaller crew than he captained once, but it’s the family he needs—Ben and Yasopp, and Doc. Lucky gets married, but they stay in touch. He has kids, Shanks hears, and it’s good to see his men moving on and settling down, even as he can’t make himself do the same.

He feels— _rootless_ , which shouldn’t make sense, when he hasn’t had roots since the day he first stepped off the docks of his hometown aboard a ship and knew what the world felt like with a deck under his feet. But there it is, the sense of being adrift, of moving in circles, and there’s nothing holding him back from doing whatever the hell he wants, but he’s never felt less free, or less at peace.

He keeps in touch with Luffy, and knows he’s gone back to visit, but Shanks doesn’t ask about Makino—can’t make himself ask if she’s happy, if her husband treats her well, if she has children. It’s the ugliest feeling he’s ever endured, the thing that’s not quite jealousy and not quite grief, and he has no other name to give it than _loss_ , simple and profound that it is.

“I could call her,” Ben tells him. “I don’t need to say anything about you.”

“If it’s what you want,” Shanks says, “I’m not going to tell you not to do it. But for my sake, I’d rather you just left her be.”

Ben is silent, and Shanks doesn’t need to ask to know what he’s thinking, or the fact that he’s disagreed with how he’s handled the whole situation, from the moment he’d first told him he wasn’t going back.

And he knows it’s not fair. She wasn’t _his—_ or if she was once, like he was hers (like part of him still is, and probably always will be), she was more than that to his crew, and to Ben. They were friends, Shanks knows. Ben has all the right in the world to call her, and to keep that connection he can’t bear to keep clinging to.

It’s not fair, but, “Ben,” Shanks says, and doesn’t care how pathetic it sounds, doesn’t care that he might as well be begging. “You know I’ll ask you about her, if you do.”

Ben’s expression softens. And even privately disagreeing, his best friend’s loyalty is an old, unshakable thing, and so, “I won’t,” he says, simply.

It feels like a severing of something; the last, desperate strands of that fraying tether that had still kept a small part of him in the East Blue. But he needs to move on. Makino had, and it doesn’t do her justice, the selfish hurt he’s refusing to let go, over the fact that she could. She’d never once been selfish.

He tries to move on. It takes time, an endless sea of drink and saltwater to keep him afloat, and the crew that’s been his family for over half his life. It’s not much, but there was a time in his life where he hadn’t needed more, and where he’d never asked for more.

But gods, he wishes now that he’d asked for _her._

 

—

 

There’s a future that never was.

In fact, there are several. In one, she’s a pirate, in another a barmaid, and in yet another she’s both. She braves the sea, by her own volition and because she has no choice, and she wears the scars to prove it, both the kind and the cruel. There’s an island in a corner of a dangerous sea, and a tavern with a green copper roof. A crew that never leaves, and a family that’s more than blood. There’s a boy with his father’s hair, and a girl Pirate King.

And they’re _happy._ There are a lot of futures that could have been but never were, but no matter the island and no matter the sea, it’s the one constant in all of them.

 

—

 

There’s a future that is. In it, she’s a barmaid, and a widow (once, she’ll tell those who ask; twice-over, she’ll tell no one but herself). There’s a quiet island in a quiet sea, and a crew that never came back. She has her share of scars; her heart that never quite healed right. And she’s not a mother, but she retains a small claim to the title, for the young man who’ll barge through her doors at his own leisure, who’s taller than her now and larger than life, the king of the sea and all the pirates on it.

They’ll be happy in this one, too. It’s their one constant.

It just takes them a little longer to get there, this time.

 

—

 

It’s been thirty odd years since he first set foot on it, before he finally steps onto the docks in Fuschia Port again.

“Not a lot has changed in these parts,” Ben muses, gaze resting on the village crawling up from the wharf, still shaking off its slumber, and in that languid way of seaside nooks and corners, where little of note occurs before the sun.

The unhurried atmosphere is the same that Shanks remembers, the sunlight seeming to soften everything, even the chorusing shrieks of the gulls circling the sky above the wharf, seeking the morning’s haul from the fishermen bringing in their nets. A lethargic peace to greet weary travellers, although Fuschia has never seen many of those. Or at least it hadn’t, back when it had been a smaller port.

Shanks spots a few more houses, and more ships moored to the wharf, and no one had even batted an eye at theirs when they’d dropped anchor and disembarked. Being the Pirate King’s hometown has left its mark, and the jolly roger stirring in the breeze doesn’t stir the intrigue of the few people passing by the docks. Not like it had once, anyway.

Shanks wonders if it might be a mercy that word of their arrival won’t precede them, at least not by long. If anything, it will give him more time to decide what the hell he’d even planned to do.

As though aware of where his thoughts have gone, “You sure you’re really up for this?” Ben asks, eyes leaving the village to look at Shanks. The others are still on the ship behind them, a wary reluctance in their distance that Shanks knows has everything to do with him, and nothing to do with the woman they came here for. However eager they are to see her, this reunion doesn’t hold the same significance for them, and they’re awaiting orders, he suspects.

He has no idea what to tell them. He doesn’t know what would be best—to have them all at his back when he steps through her doorway for the first time in thirty years, or to greet her alone. He doesn’t know which would be the kinder alternative, for Makino or for himself, and even Ben had had no wisdom to offer when Shanks had asked for it.

But no matter which he chooses, he can bear it, he thinks. Seeing her now, after so many years. Her children will be grown; they might have already left home, or set out to sea, but it won’t undo him, seeing the life she’s made for herself.

He can bear it, but indecision holds him back even now. And it’s a little ridiculous that even after so many years, _that_ hasn’t changed.

But then his feelings for her haven’t, so maybe it’s not that strange after all.

“Red-Hair?” someone asks then, and Shanks looks up just as Ben does, to find a man observing them with an expression of surprise. From the looks of him, he’s just finished hauling in the morning’s catch, a well-worn dinghy idling a few paces off, still bobbing in the water.

His smile is a thing of now-familiar wryness. “Not anymore,” Shanks says. It’s been years since his last red hairs surrendered to the grey, but there are other things that will spark the memory of Fuschia’s inhabitants. The scars, for one. His missing arm.

The fisherman who’d addressed him looks familiar, but it takes Shanks a moment to place him. A frequent patron of Makino’s, and they’re not that far apart in age, although he carries his years with more grace than Shanks does.

The thought that follows is as quick as it’s damning, finding him completely defenceless, and he has the sudden impulse to ask _are you the one, then?_

Shanks tries to keep his smile from faltering. “Hey, I remember you,” he says, amicably, no lie in the words, although there’s no name to go with the face, no matter how hard he looks. “Although you were a lot younger, last I was here.” Then, the corner of his mouth lifting, “I’d say the same for myself, but I feel that’s a little redundant. The evidence speaks for itself.”

It doesn’t spark a smile. Instead, the man starts, as though he’d been lost in thought. “You’re, ah—back,” he blurts.

The fact that he can’t tell what’s behind that remark has something knotting in his gut, but, “Yeah,” Shanks laughs, and wishes it didn’t sound so forced. “I was in the neighbourhood,” he lies. “Thought I’d stop by, for old times’ sake.”

At any other time, he would have expected Ben to offer a comment to that, if only to tell him he’s not fooling anyone, but he doesn’t betray him. In fact, Ben doesn’t even flinch, and from his expression Shanks can’t tell if he shares his suspicions regarding the man’s marital status, but doesn’t dismiss the possibility.

The fisherman nods, a little absentmindedly. For the life of him, Shanks can’t recall his name. “Well,” he says, with a small smile. “Makino-san will certainly be surprised.”

It’s been years since anyone said her name in his presence, but even Luffy’s offhand mentions had never sparked such a visceral reaction as this, leaving him suddenly winded.

But—Makino- _san_ , Shanks thinks, the realisation like heaving for breath, and he feels pathetic for the surge of _relief_ it brings him. What does it change, that it’s not the man standing before him that’s her husband? He’ll still have to face him, whoever it turns out to be.

“Pleasantly, I hope,” Shanks says, with a laugh that doesn’t quite succeed in being that. “I wouldn’t want to make things awkward.”

The man blinks. “Awkward?”

“Her family,” Shanks elaborates, but doesn’t say more than that—doesn’t think he has to. He knows how port-towns work, and knows there isn’t a soul in this village who was alive the last time he stood on these docks who didn’t know about it—their sweet and bookish barmaid and the pirate who couldn’t leave well enough alone.

His brows furrow at that. “Makino-san doesn’t have a family,” he says. “Well, not unless you’re counting Luffy.”

There’s a sudden, deafening stillness within him.

“Last I heard, she was married,” Shanks says. He doesn’t look at Ben when he says it, because he’d never once doubted that he’d told him the truth. And he doesn’t know why it sounds like a plea—or maybe he does know, maybe he knows exactly why it sounds like a plea, with the first beginnings of realisation dawning.

He still doesn’t look at Ben. He has the feeling that if he does, he’ll find the answer he’s not even sure he wants.

“Oh, yeah, but that was years ago,” he’s told, by the man whose name he can’t remember, who is no more to him now than he had been thirty years ago but who’s unravelling his entire existence, and without even lifting a finger.

Then, “Husband died not long after the wedding,” he continues, and something within Shanks _stops._

He gives a shrug then. “She never remarried,” he says, putting into words the realisation that has already found its mark, and with far less kindness.

It feels like he’s been _shot_.

The man’s smile lifts a bit then, a rueful little thing. “To be honest, no one was really surprised. We were all kind of hoping you were coming back, but they said you were dead. I remember she took it hard.”

There’s a part of him that’s tempted to blurt that he wishes he was, but he can’t seem to manage the voice to say anything, let alone an inappropriate quip.

Turning to Ben now, he doesn’t know what he’s seeking exactly, but, “Go,” Ben says, the decision already made for him. Then with a look, “If you don’t, I’ll personally drag you there by the back of your shirt,” he adds, and Shanks might have laughed at the feigned threat, only he can’t quite manage a laugh, and the threat doesn’t sound feigned at all.

He’s making for the tavern before he’s had the chance to think too much about what’s been put before him—the realisation that the greatest mistake he’s ever made was one he wasn’t even aware of making. But now that the rope has begun to fray there’s no stopping it, and the thoughts follow him up the street, past houses he’s not even seeing, each truth harder and harder to bear, until he’s surprised he still has legs left to walk with.

If he’d just let Ben call her when he’d suggested it—if he’d just asked Luffy about how she was doing, and he hadn’t spent so many years gathering up the strength to face her…

Then the bat-wing doors are before him, and everything else leaves, every mistake and every regret anchored to it, until it’s just him left, standing on her porch like it hasn’t been thirty years since the last time.

He hesitates a single second, because indecision has been the devil on his back for so long and it’s no easier throwing it off than it ever was, but then he’s pushing through the doors, the soft whine lingering on the morning air even after his breath leaves him at the sight of her.

She’s behind the bar, her back turned, and Shanks watches her rise up on her toes to place a newly polished glass back on the shelf. And he hasn’t even seen her face, but his heels feel rooted to the floor, and all he can do is stare, right across the room that hasn’t changed in thirty years, to the woman that’s more familiar than anything in it, even if it’s been half his life since he last saw her.

“We’re not open yet,” Makino says then, without turning around, and the sound of her voice drags his breath right back out from where it’s lodged itself at the bottom of his throat like a sob.

She nudges the glass into place, slender fingers reaching for another one, the rise of her knuckles curving a tender arc along the crystal, before she’s taken it from the shelf and settled back on her heels. The long braid down her back shifts as she moves, the thick veins of silver running through the dark colour catching in the light, before she’s turning, lifting her eyes to the doorway, and to him. “You’ll have to come back lat—”

The glass in her hand slips from her fingers, shattering on the floorboards.

It doesn’t faze her, and even Shanks feels detached from the disturbance, still watching her from just beyond the doorway, his knees locked and his whole body frozen, seized by more than just the sight of her now, with her eyes holding his.

Her mouth parted from her earlier remark but her smile wiped off, Makino doesn’t say anything, but he reads her thoughts on her face—the rapid shift from confusion to disbelief to realisation to denial, and finally to an understanding so _wrought_ , for the span of a breath it looks like she’ll shatter like the glass she’d dropped.

She doesn’t, seeming to keep herself upright from shock if nothing else, and there’s a moment, observing the confusion when it bleeds back into her features, into her eyes, clouding the understanding that had been there a moment before, that Shanks wonders if he’s the one who’ll break first.

“You were married,” he rasps; the first thing he can think to say. And it’s not an accusation, or even an excuse. He doesn’t know what it is, or what it’s supposed to be, but it’s all that comes to him when he looks for something— _anything—_ to say to her.

Her lip trembles, her mouth working. She seems to be searching for her own words, and, “You were dead,” Makino says, the words hoarse, but it’s as much a defence as his remark was an accusation. Instead it just sounds as though they’re listing facts, taking stock of their lives thus far, as though they might as well be saying _your hair is grey_ , and _you still dress like you used to._

She does, he sees then. Her hair might be longer but the kerchief is the same (it’s yellow, and simpler than the one tucked away in his cabin, the physical embodiment of the promise he’d made her once to come back, and that he’d kept wrapped around the hilt of his sword for over a decade, and longer than he cared to admit even after he’d had confirmed that there was nothing for him to go back _to_ ), and she both looks like she used to, and doesn’t. Her eyes are dark, framed by those thick lashes he remembers would kiss her cheeks when she’d sleep, but he can’t tell just what shade of brown they are from this distance. He can’t tell if there are still freckles across the bridge of her nose; if they’re just too pale to make out, or if she’s lost them to the years, as some do. And she was always small and graceful, but it’s a different kind of grace he finds in her movements now; a little older, a little more tempered.

Makino hasn’t said anything else, although the look on her face assures him it’s not because she has nothing to say. And she might be older, and changed in some ways, but she’s always been painfully easy for him to read, and it’s the very smallest of things, but it’s more than he’d hoped for walking through her doors, and so he grabs hold before he can talk himself out of it.

It doesn’t take many steps to cover the distance between them, no hurry to his movements, but purpose. Makino doesn’t move an inch as he does, as though afraid he’ll vanish if she so much as twitches a finger. And Shanks doesn’t know what she expects him to do, or even what she wants it to be, but _hopes_ —a younger man’s hope; a desperate, foolish thing that shouldn’t even be his to feel—that they’re not too broken for mending. Or if whatever they were is, that maybe there’s still some way to salvage what they could be, all the sharp, broken pieces.

Kneeling, he makes to pick up the broken glass at her feet, and it’s what finally jars her out of her stupor, because then she’s dropped to her knees, reaching for his hand to pick the shards from his palm, to wrap them in her apron; a quick and efficient handling that makes him wonder if she’s just grasping for the first thing she knows how to do, when she doesn’t know what to do with him.

But her hands are shaking, almost uncontrollably, and before she can reach for the last piece, trembling fingers almost begging to be cut, he’s caught them in his.

She _jerks_ at the touch, like she’s been struck, but doesn’t tug her hand away, letting it instead go slack in his. It’s like he remembers, the skin soft and her palms lined with callouses, the back of it written with gently protruding veins; a map of a long life. The other is tucked around her apron and the broken glass, her knuckles white under her skin, and for a moment all she does is stare at his, dark and scarred and curved around her own.

Her eyes lift to meet his then, and this close he can see the years in them, and on her face; the gentle lines written in her skin like the silver in her hair. And it hits him then, just how long it’s been, but with that thought comes another—that he’s done making mistakes, and if there’s even the smallest shred of a chance that it’s not all lost, it’s more than he’s had in over twenty years.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he says. And he has so much more than that to apologise for, but it’s not so much an apology as it is a question—not one that pretends that the past thirty years haven’t happened, but one that knows that they have, and asks anyway.

He sees the answer in her eyes with the tears that well up in them, gathering in her lashes before spilling over and down her cheeks, but when she lets the sob loose it’s a smile that precedes it, and the hand tucked into his grips it back, and so hard that he remembers, suddenly, just how much strength there’d been in those small hands.

And it’s the same strength that he finds in the forgiveness she offers, without asking or even demanding what’s her due, when Makino looks at him and says, like it’s the only question that matters, “Can I get you a drink, Captain?”

He’s never looked good crying, and he doubts the years have changed that, but it’s difficult to even spare a thought to the fact when she’s still looking at him like that—like she had once, flat on his back on the floor of her bar and all his scars offered up, and she’d still named him the prettiest man she’d ever met.

“That depends,” Shanks says, and when her brows draw together, dredges up a smile that he hasn’t touched in two decades; the one that was always hers, and asks, because he’s made the mistake of waiting before and he’s not about to squander the chance now that he has it—

“Does it come with the barmaid?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a firm believer in the fact that it's never too late to find happiness, but even so, this one hurt to write. I'm going to need to write something disgustingly happy for them just to counteract this.


End file.
